"Well, come along, then."
We moved towards the door. As she opened it a faint, weak cry fell on my
ear. My heart stood still.
"What's that?" I asked, stopping on the threshold.
"Your child," she said shortly.
That, too! Oh, my love! oh, my poor love! All these long months!
"She allus said she'd send for you when she'd got over her trouble," the
woman said as we climbed the stairs. "'I'd like him to see his little
baby, nurse,' she says; 'our little baby. It'll be all right when the
baby's born,' she says. 'I know he'll come to me then. You'll see.' And
I never said nothin'--not thinkin' you'd come if she was your leavins,
and not dreamin' as you could be 'er husband an' could stay away from
'er a hour--her bein' as she was. Hush!"
She drew a key from her pocket and fitted it to the lock. She opened the
door and I followed her in. It was a large, dark room, full of
old-fashioned furniture. There were wax candles in brass candlesticks
and a smell of lavender.
The big four-post bed was covered with white.
"My lamb--my poor pretty lamb!" said the woman, beginning to cry for the
first time as she drew back the sheet. "Don't she look beautiful?"
I stood by the bedside. I looked down on my wife's face. Just so I had
seen it lie on the pillow beside me in the early morning when the wind
and the dawn came up from beyond the sea. She did not look like one
dead. Her lips were still red, and it seemed to me that a tinge of
colour lay on her cheek. It seemed to me, too, that if I kissed her she
would wake, and put her slight hand on my neck, and lay her cheek
against mine--and that we should tell each other everything, and weep
together, and understand and be comforted.
So I stooped and laid my lips to hers as the old nurse stole from the
room.
But the red lips were like marble, and she did not wake. She will not
wake now ever any more.